Modified Duel of Wits

[RyvenCedrylle]

While I suppose this is technically a 4E house rule, I'm placing it here because I want the input of both 4E and Burning Wheel players.

I tried running a Duel of Wits the other day in my 4E game translated as literally as possible from BW and it didn't work so well - the players didn't quite know where to go with it and it was difficult for them to come up with valid maneuvers like Feint and Obfuscate. So I've rejiggered the idea for my other group and am going to try it on Thursday night with them. I'd like to get some feedback on it first, if you please. It runs bascially like a skill challenge - first to 6 successes wins, script out 3 skills in advance and then volley.

Further Clarification:

a Bonus Token is nearly identical to a FATE point from the system of the same name. A Fallout Token is the exact opposite and controlled by the DM.

"Knowledge" refers collectively to Arcana, History, Religion, and Nature.

A Failure for the PCs is a Success for the opposition.

 

[Noumenon]

I love Duel of Wits and wish D&D had a "social combat" aspect to it. Hopefully the 6 success 3 failure skill challenge will work for representing the "social hit points" Duel of Wits gives you.

Your chart looks really complicated. Looking at the Duel of Wits rules, I think those are just as complicated -- they could probably use a chart like yours for the moment of play!

So in Duel of Wits you have these options: Avoid, Dismiss, Feint, Incite, Obfuscate, Point, Rebut. So how did you map those to skills?

• Avoid = Bluff
• Dismiss = Intimidate
• Feint = Bluff again
• Incite = Streetwise
• Obfuscate = Knowledge?
• Point = Diplomacy
• Rebut = Insight

Looks to me like you probably didn't do things that way -- you're one skill short. Also, "Point" is a bread-and-butter skill in Duel of Wits, so is it OK to make Diplomacy do what it does and have non-diplomatic characters do other things? Probably, if you have the whole party involved in the duel. In Burning Wheel, is it possible to suck at the skill check involved in making Points so that you have to go for all Avoid or Incite instead?

If you didn't match up skills one-to-one, how'd you make your table? Just imagining?

I do not understand the cells being subdivided into
DC Win (vs. Win)
DC Lose (vs. Lose)

Is that when both players roll versus a DC, and then if they both win, you have to compare how much they beat the DC?

Finally, I don't think the color-coding is working for you. Can I look at the green and say "Ah, I see the pattern of where the PC rolls and where the NPC rolls?" Not really. I'd repurpose the color coding so that red means Bad Failure (fallout token), green means Good Success, light red means regular failure, and light green means regular success. Then I could get a clue by looking whether using Intimidate vs Streetwise was good or bad.

 

[RyvenCedrylle]

My problem with the BW maneuvers (Point, Rebut, Avoid, Dismiss, Feint, Incite, Obfuscate) is that most of them didn't seem to make any sense to my players. They could do Point, Dismiss and Incite. They also had a basic sense of what Rebut and Feint should be, but Rebut felt like a Point and they couldn't roleplay Feint very well making it a useless choice. Avoid and Obfuscate were completely counter-intuitive to them - "Why am I avoiding the topic of the argument I'm trying to make?"

Then there was the actual play. First they picked a maneuver, had to figure out what Skill to roll, then check the grid to see what happened versus the opponents' choice and then finally resolve the event. It was way too slow. I'm sure it would be faster with experience, but I want something that can be picked up and run with.

When I started the redesign, I built the foundation on the idea that my players can all creatively roleplay the Skills, so I should just make them the maneuvers. In theory, it would make the system accessible to "rollplayers" as well, but that's not an issue with my group(s). I also wanted to make sure every option had the potential to accrue Successes so that we didn't run into the issue of needing to script one or two specific Skills (probably Diplomacy) to win all the time. Every skill needs to have a chance at progress or regress. Next, I wanted to throw out the Hesitate mechanic since it doesn't fit with 4E group skill challenges. Finally, because I wanted to reduce the system to one table instead of two (the grid and then the maneuver descriptions), I would build the effects or feel of the Skill/Maneuvers directly into the table itself.

Diplomacy has the most varied results because its the one people are going to fall back on, so I wanted to make sure almost anything could happen if you pick it. Bluff isn't necessarily the best skill for gaining Successes, but it has a signficant ability to numerically screw over the opposition. Insight is the safe choice - not a lot of punch, but you're probably not going to hurt your cause either. Intimidate is the high risk/high reward option where Streetwise works kind of like Avoid, taking away options and disrupting strategy. Finally, Knowledge is where you go for the more bizarre effects and the killer for the powerful Intimidate.

It follows the spirit of BW's Duel of Wits, but isn't a literal translation. You can still think strategically - if you think your opponent is going to come out with 'shock and awe' (Intimidate followed by Bluff), you can script Knowledge and Insight to shut them down. Not every Skill has a clear counter since I'm really trying to avoid the thing devolving into RPS or Pokemon. There's supposed to be a risk-reward mechanic involved; the highest-paying Skills also have the easiest "kills." Hope all that answers your questions!

I'll look over the color scheme again. In the split-color boxes, the characters are rolling against each other's dice AND one is also rolling against a set DC (much like how Obfuscate rolls against the opponent AND an obstacle). If that isn't clear, however, it needs to change. Thanks for the critique, Noumenon!

 

[Noumenon]

Rebut felt like a Point and they couldn't roleplay Feint very well making it a useless choice. Avoid and Obfuscate were completely counter-intuitive to them - "Why am I avoiding the topic of the argument I'm trying to make?"

...Then there was the actual play. First they picked a maneuver, had to figure out what Skill to roll, then check the grid to see what happened versus the opponents' choice and then finally resolve the event.

I never actually played the system, just read some actual play reports. Too bad it doesn't run so smooth.

Not every Skill has a clear counter since I'm really trying to avoid the thing devolving into RPS or Pokemon. There's supposed to be a risk-reward mechanic involved; the highest-paying Skills also have the easiest "kills."

I made a version of this that takes out all your complexity and leaves only the RPS choices. If this is the most stripped-down version possible, then it might be possible to add some of the complexity back in without getting too confusing.

Simply having this table in front of them, with your excellent descriptions of the skills as a guide to roleplaying and the +/- columns as a guide to rollplaying, might be enough to let my players run a Duel of Wits social combat in 4E.

The +/- bonuses are not totally polished -- I tried to get a +4, +2, -2, and -4 in each column, but some didn't work out. I thought maybe you could differentiate the skills by having one skill be +4 +4 +4 -4 -4 -4 (risky Intimidate) and another be 0 0 +2 -2 0 0 (safe choice of Diplomacy) but it would take some work to get all those things to line up and balance.

One thing I'd like to add back in is that cool "Finish him!" maneuver that Duel of Wits has with the Dismiss move.

 

[theRogueRooster]

This is very interesting! I've been thinking for some time about a way to incorporate Mouse Guard's conflict rules in place of 4E's skill challenges. As you probably know, Mouse Guard is vaguely similar to Burning Wheel, though conflicts only use 4 action types: Attack, Defend, Feint, and Maneuver.

In my system I've been working on, I was trying to find a good way to derive starting disposition based on skill rolls, and then have the players roll "damage" on successful attacks and feints, because... well, you know, you roll for damage in D&D. However, I like your idea of "the first to 6 successes" better. Yoink!

-tRR

 

[Rechan]

Duel of Wits 4e, pt 1
Duel of Wits 4e, part 2

 

[Mark]

Be sure to check out Shakespeare's As You Like It, Act V, Scene IV, and in particular the exchange between Touchstone and Jaques (beginning where Touchstone enters) -

RhymeZone: Shakespeare > Comedies > As You Like It > Act V, scene IV

That's a duel of wits.